[1993-09-25-SMW-TV] Interview: Jim Cornette

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Candido and Horner are arguing about something with Cornette involved. Les Thatcher shows up on behalf of the SMW Board of Directors to announce that Cornette has been IMPEACHED as commissioner of SMW! Cornette and Mantell are hilarious together.

[Cox]

This was one of my favorite angles from SMW. Before this segment, Candido had wrestled Dark Secret (Road Dogg under a hood) in a match where if Candido lost, he could take the baby bonnet off of his head (which he was wearing as the result of a match he had with Tim Horner). Candido and Secret work the lightest match you'll ever see, kind of a forerunner to the Fingerpoke of Doom type stuff, except they somehow got a whole match out of it, and Candido wins to take the bonnet off. I love Candido's reaction when Les Thatcher brings out the letter telling Cornette he was being promoted, and Dutch did some great work with Cornette here as well.

[El-P]

Yeah, fun little angle, and once again, it actually makes sense. You don't let a totally corrup commissionner do whatever he wants for too long. This match was a travesty, Cornette gets impeached. Dutch trying to salvage his job during the rest of the show was pretty funny.

[Kevin Ridge]

At least what we got from yearbook, I think the impeachment thing came along too quick for Cornette. Yeah, you don't want to overdue it and the whole commissioner/general manager has been beaten into the ground but I wanted to see more of Cornette in SMW. Cornette and Dutch's reactions to the letter were pretty fantastic though.

[PeteF3]

Mantell was absolute gold during the Candido/Dark Secret bout. They're doing the most obvious "fake" match ever and Dutch is calling it like it's Kawada and Misawa in the Budokan. His shameless asskissing beforehand was great too, in response to Cornette appointing himself the referee. "Good move, Mr. Commissioner! Good move!"

 

Tim Horner is confronting Cornette and Candido afterward when Les Thatcher comes out to deliver a letter from the infamous and oh-so-secret SMW Board of Directors. Candido is convinced it's a promotion, but it's an impeachment instead! "Jimmy, did that letter say anything about me?!" This may come as a little deus ex machina-esque, but I think this type of angle should probably be ended too soon rather than too late, so Cornette erred in the right side here. Commissioner Cornette, like Tirantes at his best, was around enough to make a nuisance of himself but not to the point of overwhelming the show.

[soup23]

Cornette yells out the impeached line so well and it really finally feels like he is getting his comeuppance. I liked Dutch asking if there was anything about him.

[GSR]

Candido has had to wrestle in a baby bonnet for a weeks as the conditions of a match he lost against Robbie Eagle (Tim Horner had interefered to get Candido DQ'd so that he lost the match and had to wear it). He was getting fed up with things, so with Cornette as Commissioner went to see him to see if there he was anything that he could do about it. Cornette makes a match for Candido with the Dark Secret and his as referee 'to make sure everything is above board and fair and square'. The two of them have the lightest match possible (almost a parody of a match), with Dutch selling it for all he's worth. Tim Horner joins Dutch on commentary and says that this is a travesty. Dutch tells him that he’s taking his livelihood into his own hands, he could be fines, suspended or even fired for coming out here unsolicited. Candido gets the ‘win’ and he can finally remove the baby bonnet.

 

Cornette says that was the toughest match of Chris Candido’s career, but he finally got that baby bonnet off his head. He tells Horner that if he touches him he’ll fine him $50,000, but Horner says he’ll gladly pay that $50,000 (not sure how Horner has that kind of money!) and Cornette gets behind Candido again reiterating that was a legitimate match he just had. Les Thatcher interrupts them and he’s here on behalf of the SMW Board of Directors. The Directors have said that the TV tapings can’t continue like this and he has some special correspondence for Jim Cornette. Cornette and Candido think it’s a promotion, but he’s been impeached. ‘How can they impeach him, he’s the boss?’ Dutch says ‘no, no, no’ before quickly wondering if the letter says anything about him.

 

Dutch are Cornette are great here.

[garretta]

Since the angle and the match didn't make the set, I can only judge what's here, and it definitely felt too abrupt. Look, we all know that Corny as the evil commissioner can't last ​too ​long, but out of the stuff that's made this set, he hasn't done a thing that could have gotten him impeached so quickly. Hell, he's only been the boss for a show and a half. If this was all the time they were going to give the angle, they should have disqualified Terry somehow in the 9/12 match and given the commissionership back to Bullet Bob. Either that or made Les Thatcher or Sandy Scott the authority figure in SMW and just continued Bullet Bob-Corny as a plain old manager-wrestler feud like thousands of others in wrestling history.

 

Dutch, of course, thinks only of himself when the chips are down, and would we want him any other way? He's done some of the best ass-kissing ever in the last two shows, but now that the wind is blowing in a different direction, he'll be damned if he's going to be left behind. This may be the best character work of his whole career, including his entire Memphis history with Lawler and Dundee.

 

Just as I suspected, the two weeks that Corny and Dutch have been co-hosting were most likely a cover for Bob Caudle's vacation. Oh well, it'll be nice to have the other ​Bob back at the same old stand next week.